This is the album I needed when I played records at the Big Chill for the first time, two years ago.
I don’t know about you, but I thought the Big Chill was all about mellow grooves in the summer sun, and that’s the kind of record I had in my box. But after two cool cuts I was faced by two young women, demanding that the music be more exciting, something to drive them wild.
The rest of the set was a slightly panicky search for the few fast songs that I happened to have with me. This year, with this album in my hand, I’ll be more than ready for those dancing dervishes if they come back for more.
We don’t see a lot of dance music among the albums that make the top ten each month here in the Observer Music Magazine. In general, the people who write about music are not the kind of people who get out on the dance floor and lose their head for a while. Or if they are, they can’t remember what it felt like, by the time they’ve recovered and try to think of wise words to describe the music. There was nobody writing about ‘In the Midnight Hour’ when that was the best dance record of its year, or ‘The Israelites’, or even ‘YMCA’. But if any of those records has ever drawn you to the dance floor, here’s the collection to get you back there.
Balkan gypsy music basically has two speeds – breathlessly fast and heart-stoppingly slow. BalkanBeats virtually dispenses with the slow ones, so the whole thing is a bit like Madness on speed. One strand of the music is called Turbo, a sort of post modern disco music, with a four-to-the-floor drum on quite a few tracks, and an Abba-style chorus on others. But the wild horn arrangements and manic singing dispel any thought of slick formulas, and you flail around the room, glad that somebody somewhere is unashamedly offering you a good time, no strings of self respect attached.
The opening track is the perfect prelude, simultaneously absurd and ferocious. The song’s title ‘Hir Ai Kam, Hir Ai Go’ is a jokey misspelling of ‘Here I Come, Here I go.’ After a delirious instrumental introduction, a man with an impossibly low voice strings together a list of the places Romany gypsies have moved to, preferring names that end in ‘a’ – Roma, Italia, Scandinavia, Siberia, America, Australia. Throw in a few other words ending in ‘a’ – familia, marijuana, export-import diaspora, Turbomania – and you’ve got a song. The artist name is Magnifico & Turbolentza; serious they are not.
As far as I can tell, about half the artists could claim some semblance of credibility, being roped in here because they happen to have made a wild track that fits the compilers’ intentions. Other projects are deliberately daft side shoots by more serious rock and pop musicians, but you can’t always tell the difference. There are at least three that I skip over, but partly to get to the good ones more quickly. If you find a place where you can try before you buy, check ‘Meggyújtom a pipám’ by Besh O Drom (from Hungary, track 2) with a very good female singer (not named in the notes) and ‘Kemes’ by Sanja & Balkanika (Serbia, track 12), an extraordinary blend of an unusual stringed instrument, Bulgarian voices and wild drumming.
Where reggae and funk once trod the dance floors, Turbomania stomps with mighty steps. See you in your dancing boots in the Mardi Gras Tent at the Big Chill, Sunday 7th August.
This review is scheduled for the Observer Music Magazine, July 2005
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